


A Crack in the Ice

by Night-Mare (Aoife)



Series: Cracks 'verse - All [8]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Adorable Murder Babies, Alternate Universe, Estraneo being Estraneo, Implied/Referenced Child Exploitation, Implied/Referenced Murder, Implied/Referenced Relationships, M/M, POV Xanxus (Reborn!), Squalo has a Fight or Fuck List, Xanxus's Filthy Mouth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 04:03:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20735939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoife/pseuds/Night-Mare
Summary: The seventh side story toBetween the Cracks. Part of theCracks 'verse.  Xanxus wakes up after the murder-babies retrieve him.





	A Crack in the Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Saj_te_Gyuhyall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saj_te_Gyuhyall/gifts).

Cold. So fucking _cold_.

He’s never been so cold in his life. Even when he was on the streets, when the rains came, and he and his mother couldn’t find shelter, he’d had the fire at the core of him to keep him warm, and he’d been able to share it with his mama. And after the streets, there had been silk, and his brothers -

He winces internally at the memory of loss, the remnants of his Flames guttering, and he shoves them in a box in desperation. He’d had this lecture, been taught how to nourish and feed his fire, and he searches urgently for the emotion to fuel them, but all he can think about is how cold he is until there’s the touch of another. Sky Flames, warm and soothing, and passingly familiar. It certainly wasn’t one of his brothers, and it wasn’t his father, either.

“Dino-nii help? Tsu-kun doesn’t know how to fix this.” Dino-nii? His brain translates the Japanese words automatically - he’s grateful for Mammon’s tinkering with his brain now, even if he’d been grumpy when the mist first stuck their hand in his brain - and huh. What was he doing in Cavallone hands, and since when had Squalo’s schoolmate had a younger sibling? Maybe another bastard? But why were they speaking Japanese, then? “Mukkun and Haya-kun set off some alarms, too. Tsu-kun thinks others might be busy for a while? Tsu-kun help if bad Skies come here. Tsu-kun thinks Tsu-kun can squash them? Haya-kun thought of something, and Tsu-kun wants to try.” 

Heh. Bad Skies. That was one way to describe the old man and his pet idiot. “Tsu-kun, what set off the alarms?”

“Mukkun stole some things. Tsu-kun didn’t tell Mukkun to, but Mukkun insists Xan-nii needs them.” What could someone young enough to be using the third person in Japanese have stolen that would set off alarms. “Should Tsu-kun put this one on Xan-nii? Something says Tsu-kun should, but Tsu-kun wants to check because Ganache showed Tsu-kun bad version.” 

Put something on _him_?! Fuck that shit; he wasn’t going to be collared by a baby Cavallone, the way that the old man had tried to neuter him and make him an attack dog for his brothers. But his body still wasn’t responding, and his Flames kept trying to gutter out even as he fed them his frustration at the state he was in.

“It might help, Tsuna, and he’s always wanted it, and what it means. For good reasons.” 

“Tsu-kun give it to Xan-nii then. Help Tsu-kun?” Someone - Dino, probably; he could feel the warmth and calluses - lifts one of his hands for and a Ring slides on to it, and his Flames surge in a response he actually recognises, though fuck if he knows where from, and he’s consumed, like a Phoenix, and shit, he’s thinking in fucking metaphors! He wasn’t a fucking intelligence weenie like Fede, and where the fuck was a bottle of vodka when you needed one?

“Wake up, brat.” The voice is his own, older, deeper; he can’t maintain that pitch for long, not without a sore throat, but he knows enough anatomy to know that when he’s finished growing, it’ll settle. “My idiot, idealistic cousin, is talking to his little clone, and I want to talk to _you_.”

A jolt of Sky Flames, rough, so similar to his own, forces him to open his eyes. His mirror looks back at him, and he rolls his shoulders.

“You inherited my Will. Though the number of cycles it has taken doesn’t make sense. Ten isn’t particularly lucky in any of the relevant mythologies, nor is it unlucky. Eight, perhaps. Or Four, if we were to be doomed.”

“I suspect it was supposed to be Nine. Seven would be better, though, would it not? Especially if all this is because Ugetsu got to Giotto.” He had studied, though perhaps not what his father had wanted him to; and finding out the how and why of Flames had fascinated him. Giotto had found the Flames by himself, but the shaping, the control? Those had come from the Japanese priest that had been the First’s Rain. “And the Family would drown under the First.”

“Oh, given the way the little one that inherited his Will is lecturing Giotto, I think we’re not going to suffer _that_ fate. Seven, you say? What’s the implications of that, in Ugetsu’s myths, brat?”

“Luck.”

“I’m sure you can work with that.” He snorts. He already had to deal with odd luck. It was why he trained so fucking hard when people weren’t looking. Sure, it _could_ be good, but sometimes it _wasn’t_. His adoption was good for him, technically, but he’d lost more than he’d gained in a lot of ways. And it had killed his mother; without him, he doubted she’d lived long. (He’d fed his anger at that into his Flames, and it had given them a red edge that kept his ‘father’ from controlling him the way he’d wanted to.) He’d survived two assassination attempts and lost a brother to each. He’d had enough luck to be able to get to the Heart of the Iron Fort, to show his ‘father’ just how vulnerable they were - he just wanted Mammon to be given a chance to fix the secrecy protocols - but not enough to avoid being caught by an unexpected technique. Luck fucking sucked, good or bad. He’d break the fucking cycle instead.

"… stay and guide him. Consider it penance, Daniela.” Not Ricardo’s voice. He could see it being ‘Tsu-kun’s’ in a couple of decades though. Familiar Flames, far more familiar than the Cavallone’s press against his, hands helping him to sit up. Nonna? Fuck, he knew where he had to be. Fucking Flame ghosts ganging up on him.

“You have a hell of a task before you, Decimo, but your hours are ours, now.” There’s blatant affection in his Nonna’s voice, and he blinks as what she said rolls over him. But Ricardo had said _seven_, and being the tenth would make it eight - or nine, depending on how you counted - and fuck his head hurt. There was something else there, and where had the other occupants of the Ring been? They should all have been there -

“What the fuck, trash?”

“Xan-nii used bad words, Dino-nii.”

“Xanxus, you’ve got more than a dozen Flame Active five to nine-year-olds sprawled around you. Skip the swearwords, please?”

“Horse-tr-” the poke to his ribs has vicious power to it, startingly bright Sky Flames that cause him to choke off the end of the Cavallone’s nickname

“Voooiii! Mammon’s claiming the main house is in lockdown, Cavallone. Unless you want to help defend the castle, you might want to fuck off back to your villa. They haven’t called us in, which means we’re the fucking target -” Squalo, oh thank fucking god, his Rain had survived the shitstorm in the Fort, had been left with the Varia, had held things together for him. All he fucking wants to do is to drag him to bed and bury himself in those Flames.

“Get over here, trash.” Tsuna pokes him in the ribs again, finger still coated in the kid’s Flames; they have a hell of a kick, and a nasty undertone - not aimed at him, but dangerous - of Cloudiness. “Brat, if I don’t call him trash, he’ll think I’m a fucking illusion. It’s affectionate, and the horse and the shark both know that. But it hides their importance to me from the old man and his shitty pets.”

“Voooiii, that you, Boss?” Squalo looks like he’s been hit with his namesake, and the thought makes him cackle mentally; he’d have to try that one at some point; his swordsman’s older brother would think it fucking hilarious. “I thought -”

“Tsu-kun got Xan-nii back for Squ-nii and Bel-sama and Luss-nee and Mammon-san. But not for Levi. Kyoko-chan better for Xan-nii, and Hana-san, too. Tsu-kun wants to let Hana-san and Kyō-nii bite bad men for Tsu-kun and Xan-nii.”

“I can do my own biting, brat.”

“But Xan-nii ended up on ice when Xan-nii bit the bad men before. And the ice is bad. Tsu-kun doesn’t want to lose Xan-nii. Tsu-kun dropped a mountain on his bad men. Maybe Xan-nii try that?”

“A mountain? Report, shark-trash. What the fuck’s been going on, and where did the army of mini-trash come fr -” there’s a soft whump as Belphegor hurls himself through one of Mammon’s tears and into his arms. 

“You’re back you’re back you’re back! The prince has missed his king; it hurt like the prince had been stabbed again by him.” His little Storm curls into him, and he’ll _never_ tell anyone about the dampness against his chest; he could hide that easily enough for his youngest Guardian. He’d never believed half the bullshit he’d been fed about Sky Flames, but this bit, the being safe for his own, yeah, he liked that bit. Even if his version of safe didn’t match most people’s. 

“Told you Tsu-kun and Kyō-san would fix it, Bel.” The comment comes from the little Rain curled up on top of a man who could only be his father, and whom he vaguely recognises from Squalo’s ‘people I really want to meet and do something starting with F with’ list. Which probably explained the headache-inducing Sword the brat who’d spoken was cuddling.

“Voooiii. The Estraneo got out of hand, Boss, and the main house fucked up. The brats are the survivors, and they’re all like Bel.” Squalo kneels beside him, finally, and he drags him down into something that was technically a hug, but was more him using his Rain as a blanket for the bits that Belphegor wasn’t keeping warm. “The Horse and I and some of their parents have been fucking shit up.”

“Tou-san has been having so much fun with Shigure Kintoki. His Flames are all pretty again!” He snorts at the comment from Takeshi; having tried to pretend to be civilian explained exactly how a swordsman as powerful as the one in the room had disappeared from the Underworld’s sight for at least five or six years.

“The mountain, and how the fuck did I get out of the ice? If you’re worried about the old man attacking, he didn’t let me out, did he? And where did the fuck did this come from?” He had the fucking _Vongola_ Sky Ring on his fucking finger. How the flying fuck did he have that if the old man _hadn’t_ defrosted him. What Stupid fucking thing had his own done _now_?! It had to be them rather than the fucking Cavallone, given they were in his lands; perhaps Squalo had blackmailed Dino - school days had to be good for that sort of shit, right?

“Bad men had Tsu-kun and Tsu-kun’s own and Tsu-kun and Tsu-kun’s own escaped. Tsu-kun dropped mountain on them so Tsu-kun’s own safe. Bad men had Xan-nii, so Tsu-kun made puppy eyes at Mukkun and Haya-kun and Kyō-nii and they helped Xan-nii. Mukkun stole the shiny rings on the way out. If bad men come, Tsu-kun drop mountain on them again.” The bitty Sky in Cavallone’s lap reaches out to touch him again, and this time the Flames don’t have the cranky edge, washing through his system in a way he could only describe as fucking soothing.

He blinks in dazed confusion up at Cavallone, who has a smug smile on his lips, but graces him with more of an explanation than the mangled report from the baby Sky. “And the Rings are yours now. Post-ice hypothermia was apparently enough to activate the test, which dragged Tsuna and I in, and Tsuna told your Primo that he wasn’t a thief and the Rings were yours. Don’t be surprised if your grandmother manages to find a way to lecture you -” he’s interrupted by a hiss from Mammon and a subtle vibration that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“The CEDEF is here.”

Fuck. What the fuck did his idiots do to get him out, and where the hell was his shitty Lightning? He was hugging Squalo and Belphegor, and Mammon was curled up in the back of his head, but he hadn’t been creeped on yet. And Levi was exceptionally fucking creepy thanks to the fuckwit apparently lurking outside. “Shit. Squalo, do we need to bug the fuck out, or can we stand them off? And where the fuck’s the feminello and the pervert?”

"Levi's trying to avoid the little Lightning who wants to replace him, Boss. Ottabio, was finished off by the kiddie murder squad. Lussuria's trying to figure out how the fuck to unbreak some of the brats the Estraneo really fucked up; they've seen conditioning like that before, when they were a kid and think they might be able to fix it a bit, or at least fix the damage from the other shit they've been put through." Fuck. That made too much fucking sense, and he needed to kill something.

«We have a plan.»


End file.
